Guide for Authors

Would authors please note that the reference style for the journal has now changed. Please pay special attention to the guidelines under the heading "References" below

Authors wishing to submit their work to the journal are urged to read this detailed guide for authors and comply with all the requirements, particularly those relating to manuscript length and format. This will speed up the reviewing process and reduce the time taken to publish a paper following acceptance.

Online SubmissionSubmission and peer-review of all papers is now conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Authors requiring further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system, including a tutorial, at http://ees.elsevier.com/ijoms .For additional enquiries please visit our Support Center.Once a paper has been submitted, all subsequent correspondence between the Editorial Office (ijoms@elsevier.com) and the corresponding author will be by e-mail.

Editorial PolicyA paper is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal, has been read and approved by all authors, and that the work has not been published before. The Editors reserve the right to make editorial and literary corrections. Any opinions expressed or policies advocated do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of the Editors.

DeclarationsUpon submission you will be required to complete and upload the declarations page (pdf version or word version) to declare funding, conflict of interest and to indicate that ethical approval was given – all studies involving patients must have patient consent and ethical committee approval, please refer to the section on ‘Ethics’ below. This information must also be inserted into your manuscript under the acknowledgements section with the headings below.Upon submission you will be required to complete and upload this form (pdf version or word version) to declare funding, conflict of interest, and to indicate whether ethical approval and patient consent were given. Lastly you must confirm that all authors have agreed to the submission.

PLEASE NOTE that all funding must be declared at first submission, as the addition of funding at acceptance stage may invalidate the acceptance of your manuscript.

AuthorshipAll authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data(2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content(3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

Normally one or two, and no more than three, authors should appear on a short communication, technical note or interesting case/lesson learnt. Full length articles may contain as many authors as appropriate. Minor contributors and non-contributory clinicians who have allowed their patients to be used in the paper should be acknowledged at the end of the text and before the references.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors are aware of their obligations.

Before a paper is accepted all the authors of the paper must sign the Confirmation of Authorship form. This form confirms that all the named authors agree to publication if the paper is accepted and that each has had significant input into the paper. Please download the form and send it to the Editorial Office. (pdf version or word version) It is advisable that to prevent delay this form is submitted early in the editorial process.

AcknowledgementsAll contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of interest At the end of the main text, all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If an author has no conflict of interest to declare, this should be stated.

Role of the funding source All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Open accessThis journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Ethics Any manuscript concerned with human subjects, medical records, or human tissue that is submitted to the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery should comply with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving ‘Human Subjects”, adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, and as amended most recently by the 64th World Medical Assembly, Fontaleza, Brazil, October 2013.

The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate Ethical Committee related to the institution(s) in which the work was performed, and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. The International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery requires institutional Ethics Committee approval for all human studies. For retrospective studies of records either a statement of approval or a statement of exemption from the Committee is appropriate. This statement should be provided upon submission of the manuscript.

Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines.

Patient confidentialityPatients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients' images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, The Editor and Publisher must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to the Editorial Office on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.If consent for publication has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Language Editing Services Papers will only be accepted when they are written in an acceptable standard of English. Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission should visit http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices/translationservices or visit our Support Center for more information. Please note, Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms and Conditions.

Article TypesThe following contributions will be accepted for publication. Please take careful note of the maximum length where applicable. Overlength articles will be returned to the authors without peer review: • editorials (commissioned by the editor)• clinical papers: no more than 5000 words and 30 references• research papers: no more than 6000 words and 40 references• review papers - no limit on length or number of references• technical notes (surgical techniques, new instruments, technical innovations) - no more than 2000 words, 10 references and 4 figures• case reports - no more than 2000 words, 10 references and 2 figures• book reviews• letters to the editor - please see detailed guidelines provided at the end of the main guide for authors • IAOMS announcements• general announcements.

Please note: Case reports will be considered for publication only if they add new information to the existing body of knowledge or present new points of view on known diseases.

All authors must have contributed to the paper, not necessarily the patient treatment. Technical notes and case reports are limited to a maximum of 4 authors, in exceptional circumstances, 5.

Criteria for PublicationPapers that will be considered for publication should be: • focused• based on a sound hypothesis and an adequate investigation method analysing a statistically relevant series, leading to relevant results that back the conclusion• well written in simple, scientific English grammar and style • presented with a clear message and containing new information that is relevant for the readership of the journal• Note the comment above relating to case reports. • Please include a paragraph in your cover letter where you explain what is new about your study and why it will have an impact on your field of research.

Following peer-review, authors are required to resubmit their revised paper within 3 months; in exceptional circumstances, this timeline may be extended at the editor's discretion.

Presentation of ManuscriptsGeneral pointsPapers should be submitted in journal style. Failure to do so will result in the paper being immediately returned to the author and may lead to significant delays in publication. Spelling may follow British or American usage, but not a mixture of the two. Papers should be double-spaced with a margin of at least 3 cm all round. Each line must be numbered.

FormatObservational or Case Cohort Studies, as well as Case Series must be presented in conformance with STROBE guidelines: http://www.strobe-statement.org

Papers should be set out as follows, with each section beginning on a separate page: • title page• abstract• text• acknowledgements• references• tables• captions to illustrations.Please note that the qualifications of the authors will not be included in the published paper and should not be listed anywhere on the manuscript.

Title pageThe title page should give the following information: • title of the article• full name of each author• name and address of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed• name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for offprints should be sent• sources of support in the form of grants• key words. If the title is longer than 40 characters (including spaces), a short title should be supplied for use in the running heads.

Abstract200 words maximum. Do not use subheadings or abbreviations; write as a continuous paragraph. Must contain all relevant information, including results and conclusion.

TextPlease ensure that the text of your paper conforms to the following structure: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion. There is no separate Conclusion section.

Introduction• Present first the nature and scope of the problem investigated• Review briefly the pertinent literature• State the rationale for the study• Explain the purpose in writing the paper• State the method of investigation and the reasons for the choice of a particular method•; Should be written in the present tense

Materials and Methods• Give the full details, limit references• Should be written in the past tense• Include exact technical specifications, quantities and generic names• Limit the number of subheadings, and use the same in the results section• Mention statistical method• Do not include results in this section

Results• Do not describe methods• Present results in the past tense• Present representations rather than endlessly repetitive data• Use tables where appropriate, and do not repeat information in the text

Discussion• Discuss - do not recapitulate results• Point out exceptions and lack of correlations. Do not try to cover up or 'fudge' data• Show how results agree/contrast with previous work• Discuss the implications of your findings• State your conclusions very clearly

Headings: Headings enhance readability but should be appropriate to the nature of the paper. They should be kept to a minimum and may be removed by the Editors. Normally only two categories of headings should be used: major ones should be typed in capital letters; minor ones should be typed in lower case (with an initial capital letter) at the left hand margin.

Quantitative analysis: If any statistical methods are used, the text should state the test or other analytical method applied, basic descriptive statistics, critical value obtained, degrees of freedom, and significance level, e.g. (ANOVA, F=2.34; df=3,46; P<0.001). If a computer data analysis was involved, the software package should be mentioned. Descriptive statistics may be presented in the form of a table, or included in the text.

Abbreviations, symbols, and nomenclature: Only standardized terms, which have been generally accepted, should be used. Unfamiliar abbreviations must be defined when first used. For further details concerning abbreviations, see Baron DN, ed. Units, symbols, and abbreviations. A guide for biological and medical editors and authors, London, Royal Society of Medicine, 1988 (available from The Royal Society of Medicine Services, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE, UK). The minus sign should be -. If a special designation for teeth is used, a note should explain the symbols. Scientific names of organisms should be binomials, the generic name only with a capital, and should be italicised in the typescript. Microorganisms should be named according to the latest edition of the Manual of Clinical Microbiology, American Society of Microbiology.

Drugs: use only generic (non-proprietary) names in the text. Suppliers of drugs used may be named in the Acknowledgments section. Do not use 'he', 'his' etc where the sex of the person is unknown; say 'the patient' etc. Avoid inelegant alternatives such as 'he/she'. Patients should not be automatically designated as 'she', and doctors as 'he'.

ReferencesThe journal's reference style has changed. References should be numbered consecutively throughout the article, beginning with 1 for the first-cited reference. References should be listed at the end of the paper in the order in which they appear in the text (not listed alphabetically by author and numbered as previously).

The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author. References in the text should be numbered with superscript numerals inside punctuation: for example "Kenneth and Cohen14 showed..."; "each technique has advantages and disadvantages5-13." Citations in the text to papers with more than two authors should give the name of the first author followed by "et al."; for example: "Wang et al37 identified..."

All references cited in the text must be included in the list of references at the end of the paper. Each reference listed must include the names of all authors. Please see section "Article Types" for guidance on the maximum number of reference for each type of article.

Titles of journals should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus (see www.nlm.nih.gov.uk) . When citing papers from monographs and books, give the author, title of chapter, editor of book, title of book, publisher, place and year of publication, first and last page numbers. Internet pages and online resources may be included within the text and should state as a minimum the author(s), title and full URL. The date of access should be supplied and all URLs should be checked again at proof stage.

Data ReferencesThis journal encourages you to cite underlying or relevant datasets in your manuscript by citing them in your text and including a data reference in your Reference List. Data references should include the following elements: author name(s), dataset title, data repository, version (where available), year, and global persistent identifier. Add [dataset] immediately before the reference so we can properly identify it as a data reference. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

TablesTables should be used only to clarify important points. Double documentation in the form of tables and figures is not acceptable. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. They should be double spaced on separate pages and contain only horizontal rules. Do not submit tables as photographs. A short descriptive title should appear above each table, with any footnotes suitably identified below. Care must be taken to ensure that all units are included. Ensure that each table is cited in the text.

FiguresAll illustrations (e.g. graphs, drawings or photographs) are considered to be figures, and should be numbered in sequence with Arabic numerals. Each figure should have a caption, typed double-spaced on a separate page and numbered correspondingly. The minimum resolution for electronically generated figures is 300 dpi.

Line illustrations: All line illustrations should present a crisp black image on an even white background (127 x 178 mm (5 x 7 in), or no larger than 203 x 254 mm (8 x 10 in). The size of the lettering should be appropriate, taking into account the necessary size reduction.

Photographs and radiographs: Photomicrographs should show magnification and details of any staining techniques used. The area(s) of interest must be clearly indicated with arrows or other symbols.

Colour images are encouraged, but the decision whether an illustration is accepted for reproduction in colour in the printed journal lies with the editor-in-chief. Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour in the online version of the journal.

Size of photographs: The final size of photographs will be: (a) single column width (53 mm), (b) double column width (110 mm), (c) full page width (170 mm). Photographs should ideally be submitted at the final reproduction size based on the above figures.

Funding body agreements and policiesElsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

ProofsOne set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, which they are requested to correct and return within 48 hours. Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post.Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

OffprintsThe corresponding author will be provided, at no cost, with a customize Share Link providing 50 days free access to the final published version of the article on Science Direct. The Share Link can be used for sharing the article via any communication channel, including email and social media. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. Both corresponding and co-authors may order offprints at any time via Elsevier’s Webshop. Corresponding authors who have published their article open access do not receive a Share Link as their final version of the article is available open access on Science Direct and can be shared through the article DOI link.

Accepted Articles For the facility to track accepted articles and set email alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, visit: http://authors.elsevier.com/TrackPaper.html There are also detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those related to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.

Instructions for Letters to the EditorThe IJOMS welcomes Letters to the Editor. To facilitate submission of the highest quality of Letters to the Editor, the following guidelines should be followed:1. Letters are meant to be focus pieces and, therefore, are limited to no more than 600 words, 6 references and a maximum of 2 figures. One reference should include a reference to the IJOMS article being addressed. 2. It is recommended that you limit your letter to one or two important and critical points to which you wish to provide a clear and precise discussion regarding the previously published article. 3. One should support all assertion by peer review literature which should be a primary research or large clinical studies rather than a case report. 4. Please include any financial disclosures at the end of the letter. This would include the potential conflicts of interest not just related to the specific content of your letter but also the content of the IJOMS article and other related areas. 5. Please recognize that letters that are essentially in agreement with the author's findings and offer no additional insights provide little new information for publication. Likewise, letters that highlight the writer's own research or are otherwise self promotional will receive a low publication priority. 6. There may be a need for additional editing. Should editing be required the letter will be sent back to the author for final approval of the edited version. 7. It is important to use civil and professional discourse. It is not advisable that one adopt a tone that may be misconstrued to be in anyway insulting. 8. Finally, it is not advisable to provide a letter that is anecdotal. While personal experiences can have great value in patient care, it is generally not strong evidence to be placed in a letter to the editor.